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William Wallace has been a key figure in the development of the emerging style of action drumming and percussion theatre. He left his hometown of Niagara Falls, Ontario, to pursue an art education at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. While there he studied printmaking with Janet Cardiff, multimedia with Tony McAulay, was an apprentice sculptor for Patrick Tiebert and was a regular DJ on the University of Western Ontario's radio art show, Turbulence. He went on to study video with Jan Peacock and critical theory with Bruce Barber, while earning his BFA in Intermedia at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. While at NASCAD he started building large scale wheeled drum sculptures and a made a feature length film and multimedia instillation about the beauty and destruction of the Canadian Landscape. At The School of the Art Institute of Chicago he received his MFA in Sculpture studying metal casting, sound art, video art, performance art, kinetics and robotics. His commissioned permanent installations include the "Earth Wheel", a massive interactive mechanical music box for the playground of the Sir Frederick Fraser School for the Visually Impaired in Halifax and "The Wild Ones", three interactive musical totems for the Chicago Children's Museum. While living in Chicago, Bill co-founded the invented instrument troupe "Mass" with Bill Close which now tours internationally with musical performances and site specific installations. He designed and built 12 wheeled PVC drum sculptures for "Jellyeye", which they still use to this day, as well as defining the "Action Drumming" style by helping with the musical and choreographic creation of Jellyeye's opus, "Drum Lotus", an hour long "hyperkinetic" drum opera. He also designed and built a percussive industrial skyline for Steppenwolf Theater's production of "A Clockwork Orange". Since moving to Vancouver, Bill has merged his sculptural background, performance experience, and his unique vision to form SWARM. The first phase of SWARM toured throughout Canada and the United States cumulating with their full show having a two week run on Broadway's 42nd street. SWARM has spawned the highly successful copycat group "Scrap Arts" who perform Bill's music and choreographic concepts on wheeled drum sculptures all over the world. The second phase of SWARM has taken a more grass roots community based approach, performing many thousands of children's shows and workshops throughout BC and Canada. SWARM developed "Site Explorations", site specific percussive videos created by drumming on abandoned farm equipment and decaying industrial sites. SWARM has busked on streets, parking lots, garages and abandoned fields all over Canada. SWARM has performed at hundreds of music festivals, theatres and international events such as; the 2003 World Weightlifting Championships opening ceremonies, the CBC Rick Hanson TV Special, the Steve Nash fundraiser at GM place, the World Wheelchair Rugby Championships opening ceremonies, Alberta Winter Games, the Vancouver International Jazz festival, the Medicine Hat Jazz Festival, the Vancouver International Children's Festival, the Celebrate Toronto Street Festival, the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival, Shambhala Music Festival, the Vancouver Gay Pride Parade, the Pacific Rim Whale Festival, the Omnimax Theatre at Telus Science World, the Commodore Ball Room and many venus at the 2010 Winter Olympics. William is many things; a mad inventor, A skilled metalworker and sculptor, a passionate performer, a videographer, photographer, web designer, sound and video editor and show producer. Whether he is firing a ceramic drum that is bigger than the kiln; casting a metal body costume that is to heavy to dip in the casting medium; developing a touring show that is too many tons of instruments to efficiently travel; or building a studio out of discarded industrial materials that defies financial analysis; Bill has made a living out of creating what others say is impractical, infeasible or empirically impossible. |
